Matt O'Neill : VFX

Attr Rander is a tool that is used to randomize the transforms of multiple objects at the same time.  This can come in handy for quickly blocking out environments or debris.

Brute Force is a collection of random scripts I have consolidated into a single tool. This was written in response to general annoyances with Maya that I have found. This will execute global commands with the intent of fixing issues that emerge when initializing new scenes, to fixing messed up files and geometry, to the inevitable problems inherited from other people during production.

Bulk Emit Control is a tool that allows you to control multiple emitters at once from a single interface. What makes this better than selecting multiple emitters and hoping Maya updates every attribute in your selection, this tool guarantees that all attributes are updated, in addition to being able to single out individual attributes and tune them across all emitters.

Bulk Export is a tool that allows you to export multiple items at once into individual files. The tool tends not to care what type object you are exporting, though it run into trouble if you are trying to export Maya specific object such as particles or fluids as a .obj or .fbx.

Devastation is a tool to handle large scale rigid body simulations by leveraging Maya’s Rigid Bodies and Instanced particle geometry to cut down on simulation time. The basic philosophy of the tool is to only use Maya’s rigid bodies to simulate large “hero” chunks that you would want to have more accurate movements while using instanced geometry being controlled by a particle system to handle the vast majority of “Non-hero” objects.  This approach is much faster and easier to handle than full scale rigid body simulations.

Easy Z was created out of frustration with rendering out the depth buffer from Maya. I have found that rendering out a depth pass yields many undesirable results. This script helps automate a workaround for creating a depth pass without having to deal with Maya’s unpredictable depth buffer by using a projected surface shader that is attached to the render camera.

Flak cannon is a interface to quickly setup a particle with instanced geometry. The script goes beyond the instancing part, it adds behavior so everything rotates in the air and stops if the particles that collide and come to a stop.

Fluid fission was written to separate out fluid renders into color passes and incandescence passes. Fluid renders can take a long time, especially volumetric explosions. In order to maximize render efficiency being able to modify things in comp is key. This script automatically sets up and renders the output as a color and incandescence passes. This gives you maximum control to change hue, saturation, and value of the color and incandescence separately.

Loftoid is a tool that takes a curve that is being animated through a scene and creates a lofted surface based on the animation. This can create interesting shapes for something abstract or detailed trails based off of character/environmental movements.

Mass Parti Collide is a simple script that allows you to force the setup of collision of particles with multiple pieces of geometry. Maya natively should allow you to select multiple pieces of geometry and set them to collide. This works, usually, but it also will decide not to work at all with little to no explanation on why. This script takes all of the guess work out of it, you can setup collision on as many objects as you want including different geometry types such as nurbs and subdiv’s. You can mix and match, the script doesn’t care. Simply add you particle, add the geometry, and let the script do the rest.

Normal light is a tool for generating normal maps from maya objects that do not have normals that can be extracted in a traditional manor. The philosophy behind it is pretty simple. By using colored lights that are attached to the camera and a very flat shader you can come out with an image that reveals the normals.

Poolio is a script that is used to generate meshes that look like pools. This application is very useful for generating game assets where simulating water usually not an option.

Power tools is something I have been working on over the years. It is a single interface that holds the common tools I find I use most often. There isn’t a whole lot in here that is unique and can’t be done normally in Maya. However, there are a few things in the rigging section that are a bit more sophisticated. There are buttons that detect edge points and some mirroring tools that are beyond useful.

I created Quick Constraint because I would always forget which object to select first so the resulting constraint would drive the relative object. Honestly this would happen so often but for some reason the proper select order has never penetrate my brain. Eventually I gave up trying to remember and wrote a simple interface so I never have to undo a messed up constraint again.

Quick Dnoise is a quick way to set up dnoise operations inside Maya's particle systems. What is Dnoise you might ask?  Dnoise is a math operator that returns a vector with each component containing a random number from -1 to 1. It works like the noise function except it expects and returns a vector argument. The returned vector represents the gradient of the noise field in three dimensions. Now if that sounded like absolute nonsense you aren’t alone. Dnoise is super obscure, the existence of this operation is not widely known.  This interface will setup a basic particle dnoise operation in one click

Reconstructor is a script to aid in reconstituting very high rez geometry. Reducing geometry in the traditional sense works fine. However the results are usually a triangular mess. This script projects a plane that will wrap itself around the high rez geometry.

Render Attr Changer is a tool to set the render properties of as many objects as your heart desires. I wrote this script because I found that in very complex scenes setting render attributes on multiple objects became a chore. I wrote this script to brute force the operation regardless of the number of objects involved.

Ren Slicer is a tool used for a specific technique to slice up fluid renders to be put into a game as part of a 3d texture that is used to create explosions. This technique was introduced by Epic, for a full explanation of the goal of this tool, watch this video, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_-LrvzhBhM

Ren Slicer is an automated camera setup tool that makes it very easy to create the “slices” that are needed to assemble the technique.

Ribbon generator uses an objects animation to generate glowing trails, or ribbons, that follow the object.

Select saver is a simple tool that provides an interface to save objects so you can easily select them later. It sounds like something that isn’t very useful but I find I use it constantly. Especially when working in a complex scene where simply select an object can become a chore. With this I just add more and more stuff to it that I know I will come back too so my work-flow isn’t impacted.